Jan 22 Shell eyes London cabs

Shell subsidiary FarePilot has applied for a private taxi cab licence with Transport for London and is talking to drivers about a new service to take on Uber. FarePilot says it was launched to help private operators earn more money and spend less time on the road.

FarePilot has already rolled out in Los Angeles and New York and is looking to expand to priority cities in the US and Europe.

For Shell, this move is a service-side push of a broad transport policy that sees the oil giant developing a range of energy solutions. In Germany, for example, the company has been busy developing a hydrogen network, H2 Mobility, and last week announced that it planned to build the world's largest hydrogen electrolysis facility in the German Rhineland.

The Refhyne plant, which secured €10m in funding from the European Fuel Cell Hydrogen Joint Undertaking, is scheduled to come onstream in 2020.